


Trust Issues and Secrets

by SneakyHufflepuff



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Breaking comics canon, Drama, F/M, Sillyness, soap-opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 13:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SneakyHufflepuff/pseuds/SneakyHufflepuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint and Natasha’s partnership wasn’t always unspoken communication and seamless teamwork. Or, Clint has a secret. Natasha has trust issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust Issues and Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to shenshen77 and lar_laughs for the beta. Warning for butchering comics canon and soap-opera shenanigans. This is seriously not canon compliant. Read at your own peril.

Natasha and Clint arrived at Natasha’s apartment in Chicago at three in the morning, internal clocks still on Indonesian time. The mission had run three days late and involved far too much running. Both assassins collapsed into bed and were asleep within moments. When Clint got out of bed four hours later and started rummaging around for his leather jacket, Natasha woke up enough to be surprised.

“Where are you going?” she asked sleepily, missing the warmth of his body at her side.

He grinned at her. “Mornin’, darlin’. Just an errand to run. Go back to sleep.” He kissed her on the forehead, grabbed his car keys and headed out the door before she could think of a response.

Curiosity piqued, Natasha waited for a few moments to see if Clint had forgotten something and would come back. He didn’t, so Natasha got out of bed and hurriedly threw on a simple pair of jeans and a dull grey t-shirt.

Natasha and Clint had been partners for five years, lovers for two and, despite their effectiveness in the field, Natasha still didn’t trust him. She didn’t trust anyone; it was easier that way. So while she expected Clint to watch her six and knew that he wasn’t going to poison her when he cooked, except by accident, she had seven different contingency plans in place for if he or S.H.I.E.L.D. ever decided to betray her.

One part of her contingency plans was a small storage unit that Clint didn’t know about, only two blocks from her apartment. Inside was a selection of wigs, clothes, cash and IDs. She grabbed a dirty blonde wig, took the time to affix it properly to her head and took out her phone to check the tracker she had hidden in his car keyring. He was stopped at a traffic light, headed towards the Loop. Natasha sighed and quickly changed into a purple blouse and a grey pant suit, hiding her face behind thick glasses. Talia Rollins got on a train towards the Loop five minutes later.

By the time Natasha reached the Loop, Clint’s car had been parked for over twenty minutes. She cursed, wishing she could have tailed him in her own car, and surveyed the area around the garage. Cheerful theaters and stores competed with skyscrapers for space; Clint could be anywhere. Blending in the crowd of professionals seamlessly as Talia, Natasha pulled out her phone. According to the tracker she was right on top of him. She looked around casually, as if for an acquaintance. There. In a small coffee shop filled with busy business people, a couple sat talking intently, half-eaten breakfasts at the table indicating this was more than just a casual meeting. One was a man in jeans and a leather jacket, the other a much younger brunette woman in a chic white suit and purple blouse. Clint and someone she had never seen before. The other patrons ignored them in favor of rushing to work, caffeine infusions under their belts.

The girl looked to be in her early twenties, but even from across the street Natasha could see the intelligence in her gaze and the precision in her movements. Talia ducked into the competing coffee shop across the street, a Caribou Coffee, and ordered a salt caramel mocha.

“Would you like whipped cream with that?” the young server asked, features obscured by a small army of pimples.

“Yes,” Natasha answered flatly. “Please,” added Talia.

She paid for the mocha, hands fumbling with the cash for a moment when out of the corner of her eye she saw the girl steal a strip of bacon from Clint’s plate. And him _letting her_. It had taken months of partnership before Clint had let her steal his food. Disbelief washed over Natasha in a wave, but she was too skilled to let it show in her movements.

Natasha finished her interaction with the cashier and moved towards the milling mass of waiting business people in front of the counter, where a young woman with dyed blue hair rapidly placed coffee orders. Natasha adjusted her glasses on her face so she could look through the magnifying lens at the bottom of each frame. The woman with Clint had a laptop case with a company logo on it, the same logo of an investment firm that was two blocks down the street. So, fresh out of college and on her way to a life of success. _She’s just his type; young, curvy and smarter than he is_ , Natasha thought bitterly.

Lip-reading had never been her strong-suit, but she could see the woman’s mouth from her position in front of the counter. She saw “Clint” and “missed you.” So she knew his name, and apparently they’d been in contact frequently enough that their trip to Indonesia hadn’t gone unnoticed. How many times had she seen this as a spy? Someone cheating on their partner and thinking they were getting away with it. She had exploited this exact situation herself.

“Talia?” the blue-haired worker called. Natasha stepped forward to get her mocha.

She had to end this with as little pain or drama on either side. She wouldn’t let this be some tragic tale of passion and death like she had seen happen to marks before. Natasha’s heart didn’t break, because she had never given it away in the first place. And of all the betrayals to make, this was perhaps the best. No running for her life, no compromising her identity. And it was almost a relief, having whatever existed between them come to an end.

Natasha turned away from the cozy scene at the coffee store and lost herself in the crowd as Talia Rollins, come down with a sudden illness at work and back to the station to take the train home.

Natasha arrived back at the house before the tracker in Clint’s car had even started to move. Her eyes were dry and her hands were steady as she packed up Clint’s clothes and junk into three boxes. She hadn’t realized how much of it had accumulated over the years. If she was a little less gentle than she really should be with his collection of shot glasses, well she was on a timetable, wasn’t she?

The tracker app on her phone beeped just as she was taping up the last box. Clint was on the move. She hadn’t had time to change the locks, but she piled up the boxes outside her door, wrote ‘Clint’ across them with a sharpie, closed and dragged a table in front of the door. It opened inward, so Clint would be in for a shock if he wanted to talk to her. It was a symbol more than anything; she knew even if he didn’t come through the front door he could work his way through her security system, but she hoped he’d take the hint and just go.

She went back to bed and had escaped into a fitful doze when her mobile phone started vibrating towards the edge of her bedside table. She caught it before it hit the floor and glanced at the caller ID. Clint. Her stomach twisted.

Clint began knocking on her door. “Tasha, open up,” he called. “Just let me explain.”

Natasha rolled her eyes. Decades in espionage and that’s what he came up with? Still, she hated drawing notice to herself. If he kept it up much longer the neighbors might call the cops and that would lead to no end of drama and paperwork with the S.H.I.E.L.D. and the police.

She reluctantly got out of bed and moved the table enough that she could open the door just a crack.

“What do you want?” Natasha’s voice was colder than the Russian winter.

“Let’s not have this conversation in the hall,” Clint said pleadingly.

Natasha moved the table the rest of the way from the door and waited, arms crossed.

Clint closed the door behind him and started talking. “Look, I know I should have told you, but we didn’t seem to be doing the sharing and caring relationship thing. “I mean, any time I tried to talk about us, you shut me down.” There was an element of anger to his voice. “What do you want from me, sweetheart?”

“Should have told me? We may not have been doing the sharing and caring thing, but I wanted a partner I could trust. And it’s not that you were sleeping with her, and what is she, like twelve? It’s a health and safety thing. Do you know how many STDs I could have picked up from your little girlfriend?” Natasha was shouting, channeling the whirling mess of emotions inside her into pure rage.

“What?! You think that Kate is my what? Oh, Jesus Christ on a pogo-stick, Tasha.” Clint threw his hands up in the air. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my daughter.”

Natasha was stunned, both by her poor judgment and the revelation that Clint had a daughter. She was used to being right about people. Neither she nor Clint spoke for a long moment. “Maybe I jumped to the wrong conclusion,” she finally conceded.

“Ya think?” Clint asked sarcastically, more than a little hurt. “Maybe instead of cutting me out of your life we can sit down and talk this out like rational adults.”

Natasha’s mouth quirked. “You’re saying we should act like adults? You were eating cereal and watching Saturday morning cartoons in your pajamas a month ago.”

“Eating cereal and watching cartoons in my pajamas, like an adult,” Clint insisted with a smile. He turned serious again. “So, Natasha Romanoff, there’s something you should know. I have a daughter. Her name is Kate Bishop. I keep her a secret from everyone, including S.H.I.E.L.D., so she can’t be used against me. I met her mother just before I left the circus, and only found out about Kate when she was fourteen, after she ran away from home and tracked down the circus to find her father."

"She's sounds like she got her drive from you," Natasha offered.

"She's pretty great," Clint said with a proud smile. Natasha sensed he could talk for days about his daughter, but his focus returned to her. "Your turn to share.”

“I, I’m.” Natasha closed her eyes, firming her resolve. “I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you,” Natasha said, blinking back the tears that had been trying to rush past her defenses all day.

“Tasha, sweetheart, you can’t just go around putting trackers in people’s car keys.” He waved them for emphasis.

Natasha winced. “You don’t understand. Everyone I trust ends up dead or betraying me.”

“You think I haven’t been there? Yet somehow I manage _not_ to spy on you.”

“I didn’t have the tracker in your keyring to spy on you,” Natasha protested.

Clint snorted in disbelief.

“Well, not only to spy on you. I had it in case you were kidnapped, or you were in trouble and I needed to find you.”

“Yes, because after two decades in the military and S.H.I.E.L.D. I can’t look after myself.” He shook his head, almost as if he were arguing with himself. “I should go,” he said, looking away from her at the boxes she had packed for him.

“Don’t,” Natasha said, the word flying out of her mouth before she had a chance to think it.

“Why should I stay, sweetheart?” Clint asked, his brow creased and his eyes sad.

“Because I want you here, with me.” Natasha let an echo of her need suffuse her voice.

“Really? Because it seems to me all you want is a warm body in your bed,” Clint snapped.

“Clint, it’s never been like that,” Natasha said, eyes wide with dismay.

“Oh really? Then why this, this.” Clint looked again at the boxes. “This domestic drama?”

“I was scared.” Natasha stepped forward and put her hand on Clint’s arm. “Some days I wake up and you’re too good to be true.”

“I’m too good to be true?” Clint put a hand on Natasha’s cheek. “Darlin’, I think most people would agree that you’re so far out of my league that you might as well be in outer-space.”

“Most people are stupid,” Natasha said fiercely. “Most people don’t know about the blood on my hands. Most people don’t know you. That you're here for me, that you never forget who I am and that you’re _mine_.” Natasha paused. “You are mine, right?” she asked, insecurity lurking in her eyes.

“I’ve always been yours. We’ve both known that for a long time. The real question is, are you mine?”

“Yes,” Natasha answered after a barely noticeable pause.

“Make me believe it, sweetheart.”

“If my mother were alive, I’d take you home to see her.”

Clint cocked his head, puzzled at the odd turn the conversation had taken.

“You’re not just the man in my bed, Clint. You’re my partner. I love you,” Natasha said, looking down at her hands.

“Say that again, and this time _look at me_ when you say it.” Desperation hid in his words.

“Clint, I love you,” Natasha looked him in the eye and saw him soften as her words hit their mark. The words had felt heavy and awkward on her lips, words that she couldn’t take back, but now that they were out in the world she felt relief.

“I love you too, baby,” Clint replied.

Natasha smiled in relief, heart thumping like she’d just run a marathon. Then her smile faltered and she raised an eyebrow. “Did you just call me baby?” she asked. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from giggling.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” Clint’s mouth twitched as he tried to suppress a grin.

“Huh. And I’m not even angry,” Natasha said, eyes twinkling.

“I guess you must really love me.” Clint reached for Natasha.

“I really, really do.” She stepped forward into his embrace.

“Does this mean I can call you baby all the time?” He pushed a red curl away from her face.

“No.” Natasha rendered all future talk superfluous with a heated kiss.


End file.
